Theatre and Malcolm Jack

Alma Mater - One-person experience blending film and promenade theatre

Sneak preview of what might well be the future of the Fringe show

26 Jul 2011

In the vast sun-drenched glass-ceilinged foyer of Glasgow’s Briggait, there’s a room within a room -- a rudimentary windowless wooden box of about 18 cubic metres. It might resemble a wonkily-constructed homemade garden shed, but it’s the collapsible…

The Hot 100 2010 - Mark Millar, Kevin Bridges and Alasdair Gray take top 3 spots

Our annual chart of the people from Scotland being interesting, successful and creative

16 Dec 2010

The Hot 100 is a list of Scots who’ve made a sizeable creative splash in 2010. It includes musicians, artists, writers, actors, fashion designers, technological innovators, shop owners, festival directors, record label heads and one mad cyclist.

Sleeping Beauty

Oran mor lunchtime Christmas show for adults a bit of a dog’s dinner, but plenty of fun

15 Dec 2010

Penned by panto veterans David MacLennan and Dave Anderson, Oran Mor’s 2010 lunchtime Christmas show for adults is another ‘alternative’ affair, wringing its topical laughs this time out of austerity Britain. The popular tale of the pretty princess…

Aladdin

SECC Christmas show stars The Krankies and John Barrowman

15 Dec 2010

If you think this arena spectacular violates that unspoken rule of knowing crapness in pantomime by promising 3D graphics and a celebrity star for whom the phrase ‘it’s behind you’ unusually couldn’t be applied to his career, think again. The SECC’s…

Flo White

15 Dec 2010

Last year’s Tron Theatre panto Ya Beauty and the Beast was an anarchic Weegie-style rehash of a popular fairytale that proved about as mindful of a coherent plot as Cinderella is of her shoes. If a formula ain’t broken, why fix it? In Flo White, the…

Youthful, multicultural urban drama Playback a success despite contrivance

Narrative remains immersive despite gang culture themes being overplayed

27 Oct 2010

This youthful, multicultural urban drama by Davey Anderson and Ankur Productions – the culmination of the PANGAA urban arts project – proves an impressive advertisement for the sort of large-scale play a bold and ambitious company can stage in the…

Zoë Strachan and Louise Welsh collaborate on Panic Patterns at Glasgay! 2010

First collaboration from writing pair

8 Oct 2010

Award-winning writers Zoë Strachan and Louise Welsh live together and are in a long-term relationship, but until recently they’d never collaborated. Glasgay! director Steven Thomson asked if they’d be prepared to change that by co-penning a play for…

Derek McLuckie and Pauline Goldsmith bring Jean Genet’s The Maids to stage

All-male version of controversial play set for Glasgay!

8 Oct 2010

‘It’s about play acting and status games,’ says Derek McLuckie of Jean Genet’s The Maids, an all-male version of which the Glaswegian actor will star in and co-direct at this year’s Glasgay! ‘It’s about how you’re never one person, you’re lots of…

Wendy Miller and Rachel Amey collaborate on The Bridge at Glasgay! 2010

New play explores theme of teenage suicide

8 Oct 2010

The creative partnership behind one of the chief commissions at this year’s Glasgay! 2010 is one that the festival was itself instrumental in fostering. Wendy Miller met Rachel Amey last year, after Amey was cast in Miller’s Glasgay! 2009 drama Even…

The Snow Queen

11 Dec 2008

CHRISTMAS KIDS SHOW Playing to an audience of primary school kids, each clutching a bag of sweets, the cast of this Arches Christmas show were always going to struggle for attention, and the din of rustling throughout confirms this suspicion. But…

Babes in the Wood

11 Dec 2008

LUNCHTIME ENTERTAINMENT A panto couldn’t really call itself a panto without imparting a stream of unadulterated nonsense upon its audience, and Dave Anderson and David MacLennan’s Glaswegian retelling of Babes in the Wood does just that, albeit to…

Foe play - Class Enemy

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

In times of both war and peace, Haris Pasovic has created crucial theatre. Malcolm Jack speaks to him about taking a story set in 1970s Brixton and plunging it into contemporary Sarajevo.